Films provide meaningful enrichment. It is a complicated art form. A well- crafted moving image embraces art and design (set and costumes), lighting, photography, cinematography, acting, writing, directing, music, editing, choreography, and a considerable range of emerging technologies like CGI (computer-generated imagery), as well as the viewers' imaginations. In addition to these variables, the complicated economics of producing films can also come into play. On the flip side, print media use writing, sometimes illustrations, and the readers' imaginations.
Developing deeper understandings and mindful practices becomes the job of school librarians and other educators dedicated to "reading a world" overflowing with moving images.
The Possibilities of Film
Media generally, and film specifically, are essential elements for engaging curriculum and instruction. However, as with print texts, "attention must be paid" to die films you select, the reasons you select them, and the learning experiences developed around them.
When deciding what film you want to use with your curriculum it is important to select a unique and high-interest film.
Teachers need to choose films that students are not likely to have seen multiple times. Students will already have made judgments about a popular film and, in sharing these judgments, will ruin the film for others.
On the other hand, when we use clips to teach film terminology to students, it often works to use chunks of very familiar films. Here students see portions of movies they know well. They know what to expect; they often can lip-synch the dialogue. But what happens is that they see these familiar films in new ways, out of context of the whole. Students come to recognize the "art " that has been invisible before. They know that the opening scene of E. T., for example, shows the spaceship leaving the little creature behind. What they didn't realize before is that the camera movement, editing, and sound all work together to create the tension and then despair felt by ET.
Framework: Big Guiding Questions
1. What curricular content do you want to explore with this text?
2 . What are the themes and main ideas of the text that interest you?
3. What teaching objectives do you want to use this text to explore?
4. What approach (stand-alone, direct link, or Rorschach) seems like the strongest starting point for your teaching of the text?
5. How can you differentiate instruction around this text?
6. How can you make an engaging and fun student-centered lesson coupling this text with differentiated activities?
Other Points of Consideration
7. Are there any special or interesting circumstances surrounding the production, popularity, or uses of the text? For example, we might want to know about the text's creator, some of the reasons it was easy or hard for this film to be produced, and the public response to the film.
8. What are the interesting or unique cinematic features/ characteristics of the text?
For example, we might look at lighting, music, editing, costume and set design, camera angles, shot composition, and other techniques and effects that merit further analysis.
9. What other texts (music, comics, radio, books, websites, or stories) can this text connect with?
10. What text- specific terms or vocabulary may need to be denned?
For example, a movie like Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Movie is set during the Great Depression. If you are teaching this film in a middle school social studies classyou need to have structures so students can decode words like "hobo," "boarders," "apron," and "phonograph," or slang like "hoppin," and to clarify geographical concepts like the distance between Cincinnati and Chicago. 11. What understandings (prior knowledge) or misunderstandings might students bring to the text?
12. How can you activate the students' prior knowledge to make your lesson/unit more meaningful?
For example, if a math teacher was screening Stand and Deliver - a film about inner city high school students struggling to pass the AP Calculus test - simple pre-viewing questions would allow students to make personal connections to the film. Questions might include:
When have you had a conflict with a teacher? How didyou deal with it?
When you are stuck on a math problem, how do you find a solution?
How do you imagine a school in East Los Angeles would be different from your school?
13. Does this text reflect on or comment on societal norms and values? If so, how?
The exploration of even four of these questions can be helpful to an educator who wants to do more than "pop in and play" a film during a unit.
Developing Mindful Practice
The guiding framework makes teaching a feature film as rich as teaching an entire chapter of a novel. For that reason I recommend What About Bob? style "baby steps" by developing a few lessons in which short films and clips scaffold your initial lessons.
Short films or clips lend themselves to multiple viewings during which students can peel layers off the film. Use of short films or clips also builds students' familiarity with close viewing and repeated viewing; these skills transfer to (and from) print texts if you model and explore their similarity to rereading and close reading. Of course, students will need to get accustomed to clips and learn to stop asking, "Can't we watch the whole film?"
Some of the layers you might explore include:
a. literary: character, plot, setting, dialogue
b. Cinematic: shot composition
c theme: essential question, big idea, or scientific/ethical quandary.
d. production: who produced it, how, and why. (These are traditional media-literacy and cultural-studies issues addressed in the stand-alone method.)
e. connections and Synthesis: between any or all of the elements above
When doing this kind of analysis, I also recommend aligning your inquiry to the academic vocabulary of the discipline in which you're using this film. For example, in the South Bronx, I developed a genetics unit with a biology teacher Napoleon Knight to frame all the essential questions and objectives around the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film The 6th Day, which is about cloning.
In an early clip of the film students see a football player Johnny Phoenix smash his spinal cord during a game. Shortly thereafter Johnny dies in an ambulance. In the next scene a news reporter explains that Johnny Phoenix's injury "wasn't as bad as predicted" and he is expected to play football next week.
Instead of asking students, "What do you think happened to Johnny Phoenix?" we developed a learning experience organizer that asked them to hypothesize what happened to Johnny using data from the film with multiple viewings of the clip, looking for cues beyond mere plot points, students are usually able to predict that Johnny must have been cloned!
Teaching with moving images
Films provide meaningful enrichment. It is a complicated art form. A well- crafted moving image embraces art and design (set and costumes), lighting, photography, cinematography, acting, writing, directing, music, editing, choreography, and a considerable range of emerging technologies like CGI (computer-generated imagery), as well as the viewers' imaginations. In addition to these variables, the complicated economics of producing films can also come into play. On the flip side, print media use writing, sometimes illustrations, and the readers' imaginations.
Developing deeper understandings and mindful practices becomes the job of school librarians and other educators dedicated to "reading a world" overflowing with moving images.
The Possibilities of Film
Media generally, and film specifically, are essential elements for engaging curriculum and instruction. However, as with print texts, "attention must be paid" to die films you select, the reasons you select them, and the learning experiences developed around them.
When deciding what film you want to use with your curriculum it is important to select a unique and high-interest film.
Teachers need to choose films that students are not likely to have seen multiple times. Students will already have made judgments about a popular film and, in sharing these judgments, will ruin the film for others.
On the other hand, when we use clips to teach film terminology to students, it often works to use chunks of very familiar films. Here students see portions of movies they know well. They know what to expect; they often can lip-synch the dialogue. But what happens is that they see these familiar films in new ways, out of context of the whole. Students come to recognize the "art " that has been invisible before. They know that the opening scene of E. T., for example, shows the spaceship leaving the little creature behind. What they didn't realize before is that the camera movement, editing, and sound all work together to create the tension and then despair felt by ET.
Framework: Big Guiding Questions
1. What curricular content do you want to explore with this text?2 . What are the themes and main ideas of the text that interest you?
3. What teaching objectives do you want to use this text to explore?
4. What approach (stand-alone, direct link, or Rorschach) seems like the strongest starting point for your teaching of the text?
5. How can you differentiate instruction around this text?
6. How can you make an engaging and fun student-centered lesson coupling this text with differentiated activities?
Other Points of Consideration
7. Are there any special or interesting circumstances surrounding the production, popularity, or uses of the text? For example, we might want to know about the text's creator, some of the reasons it was easy or hard for this film to be produced, and the public response to the film.
8. What are the interesting or unique cinematic features/ characteristics of the text?
For example, we might look at lighting, music, editing, costume and set design, camera angles, shot composition, and other techniques and effects that merit further analysis.
9. What other texts (music, comics, radio, books, websites, or stories) can this text connect with?
10. What text- specific terms or vocabulary may need to be denned?
For example, a movie like Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Movie is set during the Great Depression. If you are teaching this film in a middle school social studies classyou need to have structures so students can decode words like "hobo," "boarders," "apron," and "phonograph," or slang like "hoppin," and to clarify geographical concepts like the distance between Cincinnati and Chicago. 11. What understandings (prior knowledge) or misunderstandings might students bring to the text?
12. How can you activate the students' prior knowledge to make your lesson/unit more meaningful?
For example, if a math teacher was screening Stand and Deliver - a film about inner city high school students struggling to pass the AP Calculus test - simple pre-viewing questions would allow students to make personal connections to the film. Questions might include:
- When have you had a conflict with a teacher? How didyou deal with it?
- When you are stuck on a math problem, how do you find a solution?
- How do you imagine a school in East Los Angeles would be different from your school?
13. Does this text reflect on or comment on societal norms and values? If so, how?The exploration of even four of these questions can be helpful to an educator who wants to do more than "pop in and play" a film during a unit.
Developing Mindful Practice
The guiding framework makes teaching a feature film as rich as teaching an entire chapter of a novel. For that reason I recommend What About Bob? style "baby steps" by developing a few lessons in which short films and clips scaffold your initial lessons.
Short films or clips lend themselves to multiple viewings during which students can peel layers off the film. Use of short films or clips also builds students' familiarity with close viewing and repeated viewing; these skills transfer to (and from) print texts if you model and explore their similarity to rereading and close reading. Of course, students will need to get accustomed to clips and learn to stop asking, "Can't we watch the whole film?"
Some of the layers you might explore include:
a. literary: character, plot, setting, dialogue
b. Cinematic: shot composition
c theme: essential question, big idea, or scientific/ethical quandary.
d. production: who produced it, how, and why. (These are traditional media-literacy and cultural-studies issues addressed in the stand-alone method.)
e. connections and Synthesis: between any or all of the elements above
When doing this kind of analysis, I also recommend aligning your inquiry to the academic vocabulary of the discipline in which you're using this film. For example, in the South Bronx, I developed a genetics unit with a biology teacher Napoleon Knight to frame all the essential questions and objectives around the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film The 6th Day, which is about cloning.
In an early clip of the film students see a football player Johnny Phoenix smash his spinal cord during a game. Shortly thereafter Johnny dies in an ambulance. In the next scene a news reporter explains that Johnny Phoenix's injury "wasn't as bad as predicted" and he is expected to play football next week.
Instead of asking students, "What do you think happened to Johnny Phoenix?" we developed a learning experience organizer that asked them to hypothesize what happened to Johnny using data from the film with multiple viewings of the clip, looking for cues beyond mere plot points, students are usually able to predict that Johnny must have been cloned!